Au Revoir Quebec City - Day 4
We checked out of the hotel in the morning and made our way to the Citadelle of Quebec.
The Citadelle is a star fortress built by the French and British to guard Quebec city from the Americans. The Americans tried to siege Quebec twice but ultimately failed. The French and British decided to build this fortress in case of a third siege. Luckily, that siege never happened.
The Citadelle itself is a self-sufficient small city. The Citadelle is a mixture of different designs of other fortresses, which makes it the best of its time. It has no blind spot, allowing them to see enemies from far away and shoot them. Plus, it's built way on the top of a cliff making it hard to attack, and it watches over the narrow river that you'd need to go through to invade the rest of Canada, so it's an important location.
We started the visit by watching the changing of the guard ceremony, where the guards in red tunics and bearskin hats march together and get inspected before replacing the old guards. There was a separate group of guards playing a marching band to provide music for the whole thing. Apparently the regiment here has a goat for a mascot but he wasn't here today unfortunately. The guards are based off the ones on Britain.
After that, we followed a guided tour of the Citadelle. Since it's an active military installation, you can't wander around on your own without the soldiers getting angry and throwing you out. We saw big cannons and a lot of clever designs that made the whole thing hard to invade.
When that was done, we looked around the museum for a bit before heading to a Quebecois family restaurant for lunch.
Then it was time to drive to Montreal. By now it was pretty hot outside so it was nice to sit in an air conditioned car for a while. The drive was straightforward but we needed to stop in Drummondville to pee and get a drink. We went to a Tim's and Steve needed to use all his French language skills to figure out that they don't have Steeped Tea here for whatever reason. But iced coffee and sparkling quenchers were plenty good for the weather anyway.
Our first impression of Montreal was totally different than Quebec City's. Montreal had that big-city vibe.
We checked in to our Airbnb before walking to the Asian market around the corner to pick up some choy. We've been missing that since we left home!
For dinner we went to a xiao long bao place a block away. It was quite busy and we had to wait around 20 mins to be seated but it was worth the wait. The place is called Sammi and Soupe Dumpling.
We got two orders of juicy pork, on order of chicken and mushroom, and spicy pork. It was all so good!
Finally, we got some Taiwanese dessert (also a block away!) to finish the day. There were some thundershowers going on so we need to wait for when the rain calmed down before moving so we didn't get soaked. But it all worked out.
Exploring the rest of Montreal starts tomorrow!
